xeberus

3 months of bjj, 3 years of wrestling.. I won a middle weight intermediate NAGA tourney against guys who had been in bjj and grappling for years...

if you do plan to compete, have good cardio and good wrestling... everything else is kinda icing on the cake. if you can defend being subbed or knocked out you win.

__________________

BearInTheClinch

If you are comfortably able yes
I mean you can't use BJJ on someone because you WANT to you have to be able to MAKE the fight get to the ground and Wrestling is all about that.

Halfraq9

.... and do it not by pulling guard.

BearInTheClinch

yah generally pulling guard is the last "takedown" you want to use
it can be ok for pure grappling if bottom is a dominant possition foryou but with strikes involved it's not usually a good choice

Jeff_Joslin

Definitely take up wrestling. It's a great idea.

It'll help you in many ways including:

1) Help you better control your positioning in a match.
2) Make you better at scrambling for position aggressively.
3) Make you a lot tougher to sweep
4) Get you in great shape, develop you mental toughness and intensity.
5) Give you more options to compete and gain experience.

Good luck. Please let us know how it goes.

Jeff

lucky13

yes. straight up without a doubt yes. i wuz training in bjj and muay thai and then started wrestling. i love it. best sport ever in my opinion besides mma. it improved my game significantly and boosted up my confidence alot. now i got my first fight april 30th. but yes u should wrestle.

__________________
http://www.sbgofal.com/

IronMan

I don't do short answers. It's easy to say "yes," but the reason why is actually much more important in cases like this.

The reality is that you don't need wrestling to be a world class competitor in wrestling, but it is a huge advantage, especially if you haven't been training in BJJ since you were a toddler.

It's more than just starting with two points (which it is a lot of the time at the early levels of competition in grappling) at the beginning of the match. Guys who have awesome wrestling backgrounds come out on top of 90% of their scrambles against inferior wrestlers, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to getting sweeps, or preventing them.

It also helps alot with mastering some of the basic techniques that jiu-jisu teaches. It helps with getting and controlling pins from the side control and north-south; it helps with transitions to the back and mount.

It's not that you can't get the skills in BJJ, it's just that you won't get them in the same degree. A Greco-Roman wrestler has an intimate knowledge of the clinch that BJJ guys just don't. They're just better at fighting for underhooks, which makes a huge difference in a lot of positions, and at knowing when their position is sufficient to get a sweep with the grips that they have.

It's a different body of knowledge. You can learn a double leg takedown in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. You can learn uchi mata, also. But it's not the same as learning the double leg in wrestling, or uchi mata in judo. The attention to detail in those contexts is a lot higher, and the application is often taught in ways that allow the technique to be much more versatile, because wrestlers have to deal with applying the technique to guys with superior sprawls, so the variations for cutting off those options are numerous, as are the transitions off of the sprawl. There's an entire game there that you might not be aware of as a strict BJJ guy.

Obviously, I think that strict BJJ is the best single style for any form of grappling that allows the use of submissions and focusses heavily on the ground, but having a versatile base of knowledge is so important, if only that it helps you deal with guys who come from different styles. Knowing, even if its a very basic knowledge, of the kind of things to watch for in a shot against a solid wrestler helps so much in matchups against wrestlers, and allows BJJ guys to do more than just bail to the guard, though that happens an awful lot.

__________________